Italy probes Apple over app market dominance

Italy's antitrust regulator said Thursday it has opened an investigation into tech giant Apple for allegedly abusing a dominant position in the apps market.

The Silicon Valley titan "has adopted a more restrictive privacy policy for third-party app developers than it applies to itself," the competition watchdog said in a statement.

It said it was also concerned third-party developers and advertisers were "disadvantaged in terms of the quality of the data made available by Apple".

The "alleged discriminatory conduct" could cause a drop in advertising revenues of third-party advertisers and prevent competitors from entering or remaining in the app development and distribution market, benefiting Apple's own apps, it added.

Apple reported a profit of $24 billion on revenue of $94.8 billion in the first three months of this year.

The business practices of US big tech companies have come under growing scrutiny in Europe, leading to huge fines and legislation to curb their market dominance.